


Bruised Knuckles and Bruised Hearts

by thenovaksisters



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec's hurting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clary looking out for Alec, Healthy Communication, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jace and Izzy kinda being oblivious, M/M, Post 2x19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 11:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11782083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenovaksisters/pseuds/thenovaksisters
Summary: Clary’s noticed Alec’s bruised knuckles before, but they’ve never been this bad. Izzy and Jace say it isn’t out of the ordinary for Alec, but she can’t get it out of her head. So, she goes to the one person Alec might listen to: a heartbroken warlock.And when Magnus agrees to go talk with Alec… things take a turn Magnus hadn’t expected.





	Bruised Knuckles and Bruised Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know how the final’s going to play out, or how malec will reconcile if they do in fact reconcile within the final episode, but I do know I’ve been left with a lot of feelings since their 2x18 break up that have come together to form this. I found it interesting and surprisingly hard to write in Clary’s point of view, so that’s only for the first half of this one shot, but this is how I picture one way of Malec coming back together, with a healthy and LONG conversation I really hope they include in the show.  
> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy <3

Clary may still be familiarizing herself with this world, but she knows how decidedly young Jace, Alec and Izzy were when protecting it became their responsibility - a duty weighed upon all shadowhunter children. But she's also come to understand that the Lightwood parents grew up reckless, joining Valentine's circle when they were still oblivious of the responsibilities of parenthood, so once they gained it, they insured that their children were well acquainted to the weight of the world of responsibilities from a young age, without realising such weight threated to crush them so young.

Now it's pretty easy for the red head to see that the one burdened most abundantly is none other than the eldest and most responsible Lightwood child: Alec Lightwood, who wears his every intention for the world to see, his blatant honesty as admirable as it is occasionally unkind.

In the months that she's had to become accustomed to her shadowhunter heritage, Clary's gone from being slightly intimidated by the tall, brooding Lightwood son, to almost awed by his fierce loyalty to his parabati, deadly protectiveness around his siblings and instinctual leadership skills. But, and t took the tragedy that was losing her mother to realise, the newly recruited shadowhunter has slowly come to notice a kink in Alec's emotionless armour, all the more prominent for his candour: Alec Lightwood feels responsibility heavier than anyone she's ever met.

Therefore Clary's observed it before: in the form of bandages tightly bound around his hands, or, less commonly, untended-to black and blue blemishes distributed densely across his knuckles. She's noticed Alec's partiality for gloves, individual _preference_ hidden under the assumption that their purpose relates to his weapon of choice. Clary remembers the times Alec's stayed behind in the training room after the last people leave, only to recognise the strain his body endured the following day.

And she couldn't help realising it when Alec stopped wearing the gloves as the bruises faded in the wake of kissing Magnus Bane at the wedding that would go down in shadowhunter history.

But while she's observed it before, Alec's hands have never been _this_ bad. So upon spotting his sister at the end of one of the institute's many corridors, Clary finds herself calling out: "Izzy!" 

The girl spins around with the call of her name, clicking heels coming to a silent stop as she waits for Clary to reach her before addressing the worry shadowing the red-head's expression: "Hey Clary, something wrong?"

Izzy's ebony hair lies in loose ringlets around her face, her lips are their usual striking red as she stands with confident yet lax poise, essentially not 'to attention' like her brother usually stands. But further observing Clary's obvious upset, Izzy's features morph from neutral to concern.

"I was with Alec just now and, well... have you noticed his hands?" Clary says after a beat, deciding not to postpone addressing what's on her mind.

She'd been in Alec's office no more than ten minutes ago, who'd smiled upon seeing her despite the noticeable disarray he'd been in: an unheard-of occurrence only four months ago. Despite moving quickly back to work, he'd gratefully taken the report she handed him, extending a hand palm up. Only when she'd glanced back to him at the door had she caught sight of his knuckles. 

"Don't worry, Alec's hands are always like that," Izzy replies dismissively, though her reserved expression speaks of a deeper concern than her words are giving away. "He's always training to hard and pushing himself to much, he's done it ever since we were kids."

Clary remembers her first days in the institute, spent in suspended animation, her life on hold, everything becoming about how to possibly get her mom back. And yet, she can still picture perfectly how under Alec's black leather gloves she'd noticed his pale complexion had been patterned in blue stains. Something she'd dismissed then - she didn't know Alec, it wasn't her business - but something that's lingered with her all the same.

"This seems a bit more serious," Clary persists, not eager to drop the subject at that, thinking back to the scarlet lines drawn out across the back of Alec's hand, like a connected dot to dot, a constellation of scars between each knuckle, linking them.

Truthfully, they'd reminded her of the cracks in the china dolls she owned when she was little - his skin split and jaggered just like their china used to be, dyed blue by bruising, the skin raw and painful just to look at, though Alec had flexed his hands as though the pain were none existent.

"He's taking what happened with Magnus hard, but he's also refusing to talk about it so I need to let him get the emotion out somehow," Izzy explains haphazardly, eyes skittish and not quite managing to stay settled to Clary's while her hands clench and relax by her sides.

"So this doesn't worry you?" Clary finds herself asking with a quiet tone threaded with worry - worry for Alec and worry for his visibly troubled sister. Though all at once, Izzy seems to shake off the anxiety to replace it with a confidence capable of reassuring Clary:

"It worries me but I tell him to look after himself and he never does. I'd usually nag him about it but right now I think he needs the space." This Izzy seems sure about, enough to somewhat put the red-heads thoughts to rest.

Somewhat. Still she lets something akin to anxiety in her stomach stir yet more words from her lips: "I don't know, Izzy, it looks pretty bad."

"Trust me, Alec will be fine. Don't worry about him too much," Izzy responds, a smile coaxing its way onto her face as she adds with bright eyes: "He doesn't like it."

Before Clary can voice more concerns, the Lightwood has turned her back and continued around the corner, into a busier sector of the institute, swallowed up by the white noise of monitors. Clary sighs, finger nails biting the skin at her palms.

Izzy seemed confident telling her Alec would be fine, and she may be new to the shadow world but you don't have to spend much time around the Lightwood siblings to known their bound is a deep-rooted and fierce one. Izzy knows her brother better than anyone... well, that's only technically true, you could argue someone else knows Alec a little better - someone who physically shares his pain...

It doesn't take her long to find Jace, and when she does he's in the weapons room, scrutinising a blade that lies in his open hands, the image only casual because Jace makes it so - the shadowhunter more comfortable with a blade than he is with most things.

Skipping up the steps to meet the blonde shadowhunter, Clary tries to relieve some of the tension coiled in her shoulders and back by inhaling deeply, shaking any anxious look free from her features. Really, she's not sure where they lie relationship wise, but that conversation is for another time:  "Jace, can I talk to you?"

"Of course, what's up?" He says, whirling around to face her with his usual cocky grin hung across his features. He turns the blade over in his hands though his eyes have come up to fix attention solely to her.

"It's about Alec, I'm slightly concerned," she starts, coming to stop before him and digging her hands into the pockets of her black skinny jeans.

"Don't be, he's beating himself up like he always does when something out of his control happens," Jace says, grin dropping and arms raising to cross around his chest once he's returned the blade he was holding to the table by his side. "He'll be fine."

That's the second time Clary's heard that today and the statement's become less convincing in the time between. Somehow dismissing the issue with a lax confirmation that Alec will just 'be fine' like they're rely on it, is almost frustrating. Maybe it's a mundane thing, Clary ponders for a minute. But she's lost her family, her human life, and in the last few weeks, almost Simon too - if Izzy, Jace and Alec are to be her only family now, she's damn well not going to lose them too. Which means making _sure_ they're okay, not banking on it.

"His hands didn't look _fine_ when I went to his office this morning," she tells Jace, studying the look in his eyes and recognising the hesitation. Perhaps it really is a mundane thing because she's noticed before that shadowhunters generally doesn't deal well with vastly emotional topics. Though she'd thought the Lightwood siblings were an exception... at least when it came to each other.

"I know, I don't think he slept last night," Jace mumbles, eyes dropping with his hands and gaze suddenly fixing on them, scrutinising each and every movement with a look of complete concentration locked in his expression. Clary has to wonder how much Jace can actually _feel_ when it comes to Alec. Does he feel an echo of Alec's pain? Is it less so pain and more just a tingling sensation that says something's not right?

"If you can feel, then you know how bad it is," she says.

"This is Alec punishing himself," Jace sighs, glancing back up to her as abruptly as his gaze had fallen before, contrasting eyes boring into her with every word. "He used to do when Hodge told him he shot an arrow wrong when we were teenagers. He's just being reckless about looking after himself."

Clary can feel the words starting to sting in how dismissive they are and she pulls her hands from her pockets to straighten her stance and try and met Jace's height better: "Is that what you're trying to convince yourself?"

"Look, Clary, Alec takes things hard when he feels responsible. But he'll be fine, Alec's always fine."

That makes the third time she's heard it and the third time is surprisingly even less convincing than the first two. "So you aren't a bit concerned?"

"I'm concerned but this is Alec we're talking about, he's hardly going to accept a hug." The criticising tone to his words slices through her anger momentarily, it _is_ Alec they're talking about and she's talking to the guy who's tethered to Alec emotionally. Maybe she ought to believe it when Jace says that his parabati will be fine.

"Look, I was meant to be out this place ten minutes ago, can we talk about this later?" Jace queries, retrieving the blade he'd been manhandling before from the surface to his left. At this point, Clary only has the energy to nod and move aside, watching him pass.

She can't blame Izzy and Jace really. First of all, they know Alec better than anyone, she's only known she's even a shadowhunter for four months, so who is she to judge how they choose to be there for their brother? Secondly, it's highly likely they've grown up with Alec never needing - or willingly receiving - the same support he forces on them, if Alec's refusing, there's not much they _can_ do. Still, there is one other person that might not be as dismissive of her concerns...

***

"Magnus, it's Clary."

It's only at the warlock's door that the red-headed shadowhunter starts to question whether coming here was her best plan of action. After all, Magnus himself is arguably the very source of the problem, and he has no reason to help her after clearly proving his change of loyalties at the impromptu council meeting a few days ago. But as the striking man himself opens the door and Clary is forced to steal a deep breath, she decides it's probably a little late to back out now.

"And what can I do for you?" Magnus says wearily as his entire body slumps against the door in a still seemingly elegant way - how Magnus manages that, Clary's convinced must have taken centuries to perfect. He smiles at her, but his eyes clearly haven't got the memo and look more tired than anything else, and though his clothes are embroidered silk, they're loose fitting and it doesn't even look like he's done his hair. Clary makes a fast conclusion: Magnus looks like heartbreak.

"Hear me out..." she starts, then stepping into the loft at his more than vague gesture, she tries to swallow any remaining hesitance to look the warlock in the eye: "You can hear me out and then I'll leave if you want me to."

"Is this about Alec?" He asks, his disposition all at once shifting from tired to guarded, making Clary look away. It feels wrong that that should be his reaction in regards to talking about the man he's supposed to love - especially in Magnus' case when the warlock is usually unapologetically oozing in self-expression.

"I'm worried about him, and I seem to be the only one who is so I'm coming to the last person I know who cares about Alec..." Before Clary can come to the end of her sentence even, the warlock has turned away from her with an air of exasperation to the melodramatic motion, and he begins to pace into the main body of the loft with slow steps completely void of his usual finesse. 

"I know that Alec is hurting," he's saying deftly, and the very thought alone of the warlock dismissing her on top of Jace and Izzy is an ice cold and terrifying one - akin to helplessness, now that she's played her last hand, and come up yet again empty.

"Magnus, he isn't sleeping." Clary guesses it's probably the edge of desperation in her voice that causes the warlock to visibly freeze, uncertainty raking down his body as his pacing comes to a sudden stand still, though for the time being his back remains turned to her. "When he isn't in his office, he's alone in the training room for hours on end. Izzy and Jace both say he'll be fine, but he isn't healing himself and he's trying to run the institute at the same time while pretending everything's fine."

The despondency present in her tone is as unexpected to her as it clearly is to Magnus but it doesn't take her longer than a breath to conclude the obvious reason behind it, considering that the notion makes her breath _less_ : there is no saving her brother... which is as crushing a realisation as it was when she first considered it.

It's something Clary's been trying to deny since the prospect of Johnathon still being alive first arose. And it's something she's had to accept in the wake of both Max and Jace's close calls these last weeks. There is no saving her brother, but Alec is by no means un-saveable. Just because he won't listen to her, doesn't mean she can't lend a hand insuring he doesn't drown himself in responsibility like the shadowhunter is prone to doing.

"Clary, I..." Magnus begins, with well-meaning clinging to every syllable in a way that should prepare her for the inevitable rejection she can't allow him to get to, spurring her to interrupt:

"You're focusing on your people, I understand that, and I'm not asking you to get back together, but Alec's beating himself up over this and you might be the only one he'll listen to about stopping."

The words fall off her tongue recklessly though all previous hesitance has melted from her tone. She can feel every emotion stirred since her brother's reveal rising to the surface and flushing her cheeks in the process, but she feels more alive than she has in a while.

There's something numbing about being helpless to the world around you, forced to watch how things unavoidably turn out when chance in the dealing hand and life becomes a game of cards filled with jokers more abundantly that not, leaving you to play with only the set _dealt_ \- turning you into a puppet of fate. There's something numbing about being helpless, which is all Clary's felt for months, so the thought of being able to pull Alec back from the edge, or at least help, is rejuvenating.

"I can tell you're in pain too but I know Alec would drop anything for you..." 

"How can you be certain?" Magnus barks, surprising Clary with the abruptness of the question and the manner in which he asks it - though this seems to shock the warlock in a similar fashion. For a moment, they're left observing each other, stood in the loft's lounge, with a midday Brooklyn light cast over its carpets and faking a serenity that the scene is really absent of, soundless by tension instead.

"I was at his wedding," Clary begins again carefully, "it was Jace who made Alec Head of the Institute, not the clave. Loving you doesn't make Alec's life easy but, since his wedding, I haven't seen him hesitate..."

"The sacrifice goes both ways," Magnus says, twisting away from her again, _defensively_ \- almost - with the way he does it and the mere hast of it, retreating towards his balcony with a trace of melancholy to each step.

"Isn't that how relationships work?" Clary asks, almost genuinely. Magnus does have hundreds of years' experience after all: _he_ would know. "Aren't relationships made from mutual sacrifice and fighting to be together despite what odds stack against you..."

"Like you and Simon?" The rhetorical question cuts the air like a finely sharpened razor blade, tearing any reply raw from her chest. However, Clary can recognise the regret pooling in the warlock's eyes almost instantaneously.

"Point taken," she stutters like the wind's just been knocked out of her, though it more or less was - Magnus, Clary reminds herself, also has hundreds of years' experience learning how to target a person where it will hurt. "It's none of my business."

"No, no... I apologise," Magnus stammers hastily, and Clary decides that it's odd to hear Magnus of all people stammer or be anything but deadly confident and brazenly sure of every word that slips past his lips - odd and surprisingly unsettling. "That was uncalled for, I am sorry."

"You know more about relationships than any of us do," Clary starts slowly, "maybe you know what's worth fighting for." Magnus' gaze finds hers at the tail end of the sentence, pleading in its vulnerability, like nothing she's ever seen before. "I didn't want you to one-day regret doing nothing when you had the chance."

With the noise of Brooklyn blaring on, Clary lets her heart rate settle somewhat before she spins away from the balcony and retraces her steps all the way back to the lofts front door. Magnus remains unmoving, silent in thought and withdrawn almost entirely. She can't be certain he even hears her when she leaves, her sentence punctuated with the soft click as the loft door closes:

"Thanks for hearing me out."

 

******

 

Magnus has had his heart broken before. Countless times though only suffocatingly so on a few occasions. Like the abruptness of Camille crushing his heart, scattering the pieces, and leaving them for circling vultures back in 1857. How she'd left him in a night, no warning, no note, like an earthquake that's devastation is vast and immediate.

Though he's never been able to decide which was worse: Waking to an empty bed and _knowing_ she wouldn't be back, or finding out just as his heart had started to mend its scoping cracks that she'd never been his in the first place, that she'd called many a bed her own, and that he'd been a toy she'd bored of fooling eventually.

Magnus has had his heart distributed across oceans, but nothing is as painful as breaking your own heart while simultaneously splintering the heart of the one you love - watching Alec's world fall down in the expanse of his glinting hazel eyes, and feeling his own fall with it.

That's why the warlock's resorted to facing Alec with anger: Because anger holds his mask of okay-ness together, keeps the brokenness on the inside. This is in the name of war. This is about working out what the most powerful downworlder has up her sleeve, standing up for his people and making sure they never doubt his loyalties. Not that he's remained as confident in his decision after Clary reminded him that that's all the shadowhunters have been doing to Alec for months since his wedding, doubting his loyalties while Alec's bared it.

In fact, if he's confident in his decision, why's he walking through the corridors of the institute now? Why has he let a red-head barely acquainted to the downworld get under his skin so? And why does his Alexander have to look so beautiful.

As per Clary's word, Alec's in the training room, in nothing but a pair of loose fitting trousers and a vest top. Moisture causes his coal-dark hair to cling against his forehead, the sheen of sweat extending down the tightly toned muscles of his neck and shoulders making his runes glisten for it, all the while rippling with every forceful punch that Alec propels forward.

Though every punch makes Magnus wince, the skin of Alec's knuckles are cracked so profusely that his hands are more a bloody mess than anything else. But the shadowhunters expression is so eerily neutral that the warlock has to compel himself not to turn away.

"What did it ever do to you?" He says alternatively, attempting to start off as light-hearted at this situation possibly allows him to be - flinching when Alec barely registers his voice. In fact, instead, the shadowhunter's punches gain force for five collective seconds before stopping completely.

Alec sighs then, rolling his shoulders back, lining back up with the punching bag, and fixing his eyes straight ahead, retaining a wholly impartial tone as he finally acknowledges Magnus' presence: "What are you doing here?"

"Checking on you," Magnus responds honestly, taking some satisfaction from this statement managing to stager Alec enough for him to fail landing a punch; satisfaction least of all because it saves him a second of having to hear Alec's bare, unbound knuckles hitting the bag with the shadowhunters brute force and power.

"Why would you care?" Alec mumbles, still trying to keep his voice uncaring... his body language uncaring... pretending that with every second his forcefulness to do so isn't becoming increasingly more obvious, even just the erratic nature of his punches telling of his fluster.

"Believe me, I care, Alexander," Magnus replies, but even as he steps from the doorway, barely a pace into the training room, Alec's entire body rakes back, almost as though some invisible force-field around the warlock repelled him and hauled him from the punching bag to leave his arms swinging ineptly, head tilted back against his shoulders so each breath quakes through his chest.

"Well, I'm fine."

With shafts of sunlight glaring down over him from large scooping windows, his tall silhouette is highlighted by dusk colours, rendering his runes all the more stark and knuckles all the more black and blue for the gold that frames them where they hang loose by his sides - Alexander Lightwood is a beautiful oxymoron.

And Magnus concludes two irrefutable truths in that moment. One: The air has never felt so suffocating between them. And two: He decidedly dislikes the heat of Alec's heartbreak rage - anger that's already burnt to the ground every bridge left between them, leaving Magnus to tread over glowing embers; wanting badly to heal this rift between them, yet feeling so unaware as of how to do so.

"Has hurting your hands stopped the hurt in your chest yet?" He asks cautiously, keeping mindful of his distance and slow with his advances as though Alec were some skittish animal.

In a way, that's just what Alec had been when Magnus met him: terrified of who he was and prone to fleeing the warlock's presence with desperate hast just to avoid finding out. How Alec's grown since then... how frightening to think of him falling back into such habits...

"I can't do this right now." Almost as if Magnus made one advance to quick, Alec's suddenly brushing past him towards the door, gaze trained to the ground and fingers failing to fold into fists by his side - evidently broken.

"Alexander..." The warlock's sentence is clipped short when Alec tears his arm away as Magnus makes a grab for it, though this does stop the shadowhunter in his tracks, back now turned to the warlock and shoulders heaving with heavy breath. For a suspended moment, their breath is all that can be heard between them.

"No, you don't understand, I can't do this," Alec begins, spinning to face Magnus with hot, wet eyes that glisten in golden sunlight and gleam with untamed fury, "You can't do this! Say Alexander like that, like you didn't lie to me."

"I lied to you!?" Magnus cries, failing to hold back the bitter laugh that follows.

"What happened to effort, Magnus? What happened to not pushing each other away?" And with two simple sentences, devastating in their familiarity and destroying in their hopelessness, Alec's bleak and despairing voice and broken gaze still not _quite_ vacant of hope... every drop of the warlock's anger dissolves. "I... I can't do this."

"Alexan... Alec, please." Magnus has never felt his heart beat so violently, though every fibre of his being screams that if Alec walks out now, there'll be no saving them and the thought alone burns. "You're right." Magnus curses himself for how weak his voice sounds but he's got no intention of letting Alec turn away now.

As hoped, the words stop Alec where he stands, but sting just as visibly and Alec lets his eyes flicker closed if not because of the pure exhaustion now buzzing between them where tension once manifested.

"You're right," Magnus repeats, trying and failing to replenish the sureness to his voice. When Alec still doesn't attempt to reply, but remains unmoving, Magnus decides there's little he can do but continue:

"Alexander, I've been betrayed many times by people I've loved a great deal... I barricade my heart because it's the only way I know how to protect myself. But I'm not used to someone being able to break past those barricades so quickly and effortlessly." Magnus explains, feeling a pang of triumph that the words come out strong, torturing his heart simultaneously as he watches Alec's gaze persistently avoid his.

Part of Alec's nature is his blunt honesty. It's something that Magnus is trying to return, but this is an all new kind of honesty that feels more raw than refreshing.

"You terrify me Alexander," Magnus admits with a breath, watching Alec's eyes flick up and meet his for the first time, "I've trusted you with things I've never told _anyone_. So when you weren't honest with me..."

"I told you, I made a mistake," Alec interrupts weakly.

"And I forgave you." With these words, he dares the step and closes the gapping space between them, so they stand with inches to spare. "But you broke my trust, and my world shifted. I realised how much you've come to mean to me so fast... I moved to protect myself, to protect my heart because I don't know if I'd survive you breaking it."

"You think I would?" Alec asks, but his nerves are gone and his shoulders now hang slack of tension, and finally Magnus allows himself to hope that perhaps this conversation can go somewhere from here. Somewhere away for accusing each other, somewhere away from succumbing to emotion-fuelled words spoken insincerely.

"I can't believe you'd do it intentionally," Magnus answers.

"So what about effort?" The repetition of the word adds a single skip to the now steadier but still thundering beat of Magnus' heart. And the slight glint of hope he recognised in Alec's eyes earlier flickers with Magnus' hesitation.

"If we try... Alexander," the warlock stammers quickly, desperate not to see that light go out, but having to steal a breath in order to continue, stepping forward all at once and taking Alec's bruised hands in his: "I don't want to see you hurting like this, but we need to be strategic. We're on different sides of a war, that makes us each other's perfect weakness."

"You're my weakness anyway Magnus," the shadowhunter informs him, blush filling out across his cheeks as the warlock inspects their linked hands. Magnus had almost not expected Alec to grip his hands back, but the shadowhunter does so as if the cracks that pattern his skin are painted not carved, muscles writhing beneath them like they don't have broken bones to contend with.  

"From now on, we need to be honest with each other," Magnus tells him, dragging his gaze back up to Alec's reluctantly, staggered nearly to find the shadowhunters gold flecked hazel eyes staring back at him, wide with innocence just vulnerable enough to remind Magnus how new Alec is to all of this.

"I know," Alec replies surely, however, suddenly all weakness vacant from his voice.  

"We're the perfect conflict of interest," Magnus says with a small and sad smile.

"But we'll find a way to make this work, Magnus, it's worth it to me." In so many ways, Alec looks wrecked, like the dusk light as it's bore down on him has drained every drop of his energy, leaving him the beautiful bruised shell Magnus admires now. But whether it's the distressed edge to his words or the open, honest look plaguing his eyes, Magnus has never believed in Alec more.

"This isn't the end of the stuff we need to talk about, it's going to take time for us to build back trust in each other." Magnus is overcome with the urge to be completely truthful with Alec as the words spill out before he can stop them. "But I _don't_ want to lose you, you believe that?"

He can feel relief like a tidal wave washing over him as Alec nods and what was desperate and distraught between them now sinking into calm and sure. Not fixed, but fixing.

"Am I allowed to kiss you?" Alec asks after a minute, once again shifting to sound every bit unsure.

Not that Magnus has to even think twice about his answer: "You don't have to ask."

What starts out hesitant, alights quickly into something deep, familiar and certain. Unrushed - like Alec could never tire of holding the warlock's face in his hands as though he's more precious and delicate than glass, and like they could find new ways to kiss under the raining sunlight till the sun burnt out of light to give.

Somewhere in the haze of it all, of cupping his hands over Alec's own and feeling his magic crackle warmly between them till the skin over Alec's knuckles feels smooth and unbroken, Magnus can tell he's gone past the point of no return, given Alec all the means to destroy him and break his heart more thoroughly than Camille herself. But the indication's there, with gentle fingers and soft lips, that Alec's handed such ammunition to Magnus to, with only the hope that the warlock won't shatter his heart as well.

Whether their trust in each other is smart, and everything Magnus _is_ knows that it isn't - all the years he's lived, all the heartbreaks he's endured, and all the times Catarina and Ragnor have had to piece him back together piece by piece - he doesn't care.

He'll risk it. He'll bet on this trust that's lingered between them since they met. The trust that had no source yet made a shadowhunter put faith in a downworlder when they were no more than strangers, and made the blood of angels share his strength with the blood of demons before many words passed between them at all.

He'll risk it because perhaps they'll make this work with just the hope that glints in Alec's bright eyes. Perhaps even a war won't wedge its way between them. Perhaps they won't break each other's hearts. The fresh recklessness of the thought does make the warlock's heart sing.

And he thinks: He'll have to thank Clary later.

 


End file.
